Star Trek fans need to do what us Highlander fans and a great majority of Star Wars fans do: If you don't like it, get angry over it for a very brief period of time, then go into a severe drinking fit, and then pretend the sequels you don't like don't exist! ... It's called selective amnesia, and it works wonders for nerds.
— Noah Antwiler on Trekkie reactions to Star Trek (2009)
Established movie franchises tend to have Fanon Discontinuity imposed on them, especially whenever crappy sequels rear their ugly head. This also tends to happen to theatrical cuts if a director's cut or extended cut is available, often overlapping with Canon Discontinuity if the director also disapproves of the theatrical cut.
Note 1: Do not include examples based only in adaptation. A movie adaptation can not be discontinued since it is not part of the continuity of the original. You can discontinue a sequel of the adaptation but not the actual adaptation. To a lesser degree you can discontinue PARTS of a movie.
Note 2: Ignoring certain works of a person or company so they're "still good" is also forbidden as that would be ignoring real life events (which we are not doing here).
Note 3: Do not post personal examples. Examples should only be of groups of fandoms.
Live Action Films with their own pages:
- The B Team Sequels to David Cronenberg's Scanners and The Fly (1986) are generally not acknowledged by the director's fans. Little beyond the concept of scanners themselves was carried over to the former's follow-ups. The Fly II does have defenders who find it a fun monster movie on its own terms; co-writer Mick Garris told Emma Westwood in her Devil's Advocates book on the original that "lots of people like it, though it is certainly not in the same league with the Cronenberg film. I have learned to just say 'Thank you' when people say so."
- Many who watched A.I.: Artificial Intelligence feel that the movie should have ended with David at the bottom of the sea in front of the statue of the Blue Fairy and wishing he was a real boy, rather than the overly sugary last 10 minutes of the movie, which feels awkwardly tacked on in any case.
- Quite a few fans like to pretend that Airplane II: The Sequel never happened. Not so much for quality reasons as they just prefer to remember Airplane! as a standalone classic and aren't big on the absence of the ZAZ team. Those who do admit its inevitably not on par with the original but is very funny on its own.
- The Alien and Predator fandoms do this to pretty much every movie made after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but they do it more to some movies than others.
- Alien³ is mostly because it starts with one hell of a Happy Ending Override and ends by killing Ripley, which in a way depressingly makes all the effort in Aliens pointless - says something many ancilliary material and would-be film sequels that stalled in Development Hell do what they can to spare those four characters that survive one movie only to die in the next (Aliens: Colonial Marines in particular is noted for the convoluted bordering on insulting way it uses to say Hicks didn't die). Its follow-up, Alien: Resurrection, gets it even worse for having many weird and questionable choices, and given it's a Distant Sequel, it's also easier to put it out of chronology.
- Alien vs. Predator and its sequel contradicted the Predator movies by (a) ignoring their preference for warm climates, and (b) rewriting their whole relationship with humans and Earth from "they come to Earth every few years to hunt wabbits" to some Erich von Daniken "Chariots of the Gods" bullshit. It also contradicted the Alien movies by severely accelerating the aliens' life cycle. These movies were ignored by the Alien and Predator movies that followed them.
- Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, technology much more advanced than the previous movies aside, are ignored for huge Fan Disliked Explanations, taking the Space Jockey from Alien and making it part of a race of Abusive Precursors that created mankind, and having the Aliens created by an Evilutionary Biologist robot. There's even a sub-tandem of people who liked Prometheus and prefer to discard Covenant for tossing out the complex theological questions that were raised by the previous film while unceremoniously killing off its main character.
- Predator 2 and Predators are at most cases of "Contested Sequel that those who didn't like ignore". But then came all the contradictory new lore of The Predator, which implies the Predators aren't simply Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, but harvesting the DNA of the species they kill to make genetically enhanced super-Predators. Even if one could take the creatures in that movie as being outcasts like the ones in Predators and thus not wholly representative of the Yautja, it was still not something the fandom were willing to accept.
- Averted by the well-received Prey (2022), aside from the Call-Forward to Predator 2: fans liked when Raphael Adolini was a pirate
rather than a non-combative expeditionary, and try to work out a way to say both are different characters and thus the old Adolini is still canon.
- Fans of the American Pie series refuse to acknowledge the straight-to-DVD installments and skip to the eighth entry, American Reunion, even though Reunion already effectively rendered the Direct-to-DVD sequels Canon Discontinuity anyway, particularly regarding the age of Jim and Michelle's child.
- Some also opt to discount the third film due to the absence of several main characters.
- The Arrival was a decent sci-fi romp - it didn't do well at the box office but was enjoyed by sci-fi fans. Those same fans tend to ignore the Direct to Video sequel The Arrival II, which includes none of the original characters and a very low budget.
- Some fans of the Batman Film Series maintain that the first two films, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (directed by Tim Burton), are in a separate continuity to the last two films, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin (directed by Joel Schumacher). They have different attitudes to each of the Schumacher films: Batman & Robin gets openly razzed, while Batman Forever, being neither like the first two films nor as outrageous as its sequel, simply gets ignored. In the theory's favour, the Schumacher films have a very different tone to the Burton films and completely change the character of Harvey Dent; however, the same actors play Alfred and Commissioner Gordon in all four films, and Batman Forever features a number of Call Backs to the previous two films.
- The comic book Batman '89, written by Sam Hamm (screenwriter of the first film), takes this approach. It follows on from Batman Returns, features Billy Dee Williams' version of Two-Face, and introduces a version of Robin inspired by the character Marlon Wayans would have played if his role hadn't been cut.
- This is referenced in The Nostalgia Critic's Old Vs. New of Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight when he doesn't bother to compare the old and new Harvey Dents:
And I guess there's really no point in comparing Harvey Dents as the first film barely mentions him and eventually turns into... (cuts to Tommy Lee Jones eating the scenery alive as it screams for mercy)... yeah that never happened. - Fans of Blade Runner insist that only the director's cut or the "Final Cut" are the real versions of the movie, not the theatrical version, due to the studio's forcing of a happy ending on the latter.
- Many fans of another Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Bloodsport, claim there are no sequels to the original movie.
- Members of The Blues Brothers original fan base often wish a sequel had been made before John Belushi died and "Buster" was born.
- A large amount of Bourne fans conclude that The Bourne Legacy doesn't exist and that the franchise ended after The Bourne Ultimatum. Ditto Jason Bourne.
- Most fans of the Charlie Chan movie series only accept the 20th Century Fox films with Warner Oland and (later) Sidney Toler. The cheaply made Monogram continuation of the series (which featured Ethnic Scrappy Birmingham Brown) is largely written off.
- Plenty of The Crow fans only consider the first film in the series, starring Brandon Lee, worth watching, although to an extent The Crow: City of Angels has a fan base too.
- Fans of the horror film The Descent are divided over whether the monsters in the film are real or they only exist in the main character's head to mask the fact that she murdered her friends. Since the sequel follows the first option, a good chunk of the fanbase simply ignores it so they can still believe in their interpretation of the first film.
- Many fans of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series only recognize the original three films as canon. Just about everyone ignores The Long Haul reboot film, for a variety of reasons (the new cast, especially in regards to Charlie Wright as Rodrick, a film adaptation of the book series' Seasonal Rot, the extreme influx of gross-out humor and Product Placement jokes, as well as futile attempts at relevancy).
- Donnie Darko fans will be very quick to inform you that there is no such movie as S. Darko.
- Most fans of Dragonheart agree that there is no sequel.
- For Dumb and Dumber fans, the 2003 prequel Dumb and Dumberer is simply NOT how Harry met Lloyd.
- Apparently Dumb and Dumber To "never happened" either.
- Fans of Escape from New York often pretend that Escape from L.A. never happened, considering the second film to simply be a carbon-copy of the first one.
- Now for the Evil Dead series.
- Some believe that Evil Dead 2 is a remake of the first film, despite Sam Raimi's insistence that it is not.
- Some consider Army of Darkness to be non-canon because of how ridiculously over-the-top the film is.
- Still others acknowledge only Army of Darkness ... because of how ridiculously over-the-top the film is.
- A handful of fans replace Army of Darkness with the video game Evil Dead: Regeneration.
- Some consider the first film to be the only canon film since it is the only full-on horror film, and they believe that Ash dies at the end.
- Fans of Harry Potter have differing opinions on the Fantastic Beasts series. While some accept the series wholesale, others accept only the first and ignore the second for a number of reasons, including a jarring tonal change, unnecessary love triangle and relationship drama, behind the scenes controversies surrounding Johnny Depp, wildly different characterizations of Queenie Goldstein, among others compared to the first film, changing facts of the book series after the fact (most infamously, changing Voldemort's pet snake Nagini into a human wizard who was permanently transformed into a snake) and most importantly, the fact that the movie has very little to do with fantastic beasts and where to find them, and has seemingly been taken over by the same plot of good vs. evil that the book series had.
- Some fans of the Fast And The Furious consider 2 Fast 2 Furious to be this, due to the entry's Genre Shift to heist movie to urban action movie and most of the franchise's fans not liking the new characters.
- The Godfather Part III is widely perceived to be inferior to the first two movies made during the classic New Hollywood era. With a convoluted plot, a love story featuring Kissing Cousins (Mary Corleone and Vincent Mancini), a former main character getting killed off (Tom Hagen), and arguably some Badass Decay (Michael Corleone), this sequel alienated a great deal of fans, many of whom prefer to pretend this never happened. Some viewers point out that it's still a decent movie, just not on par with The Godfather I and II. Others use Brain Bleach to forget its existence. In any case, when people refer to the great The Godfather movies, they more often than not mean the first two.
- Word of God says that the movie was never intended to be on the epic scale of the first two, and in fact the original title was the spoilerific The Death of Michael Corleone before Executive Meddling took over.
- An ironic reversal of what happened with Part II. The studio were dead set against simply calling it The Godfather Part II — "Boring! More of the same!" — but Coppola dug in, insisting that it was a continuation of the original movie and not a separate story. Fifteen years later he wants to make The Death of Michael Corleone, and — "You want to call it what? You're insane! The Godfather is the most acclaimed franchise in cinema, and this is part three!" Cue the crushing disappointment when it turns out to be utterly unlike parts I and II. (Of course, as the original entry points out, there were other problems.)
- Word of God says that the movie was never intended to be on the epic scale of the first two, and in fact the original title was the spoilerific The Death of Michael Corleone before Executive Meddling took over.
- Most Grease fans agree that there was never a movie titled Grease 2.
- Hannibal Rising is frequently ignored due to its absolute ridiculousness (Hannibal Lecter creator Thomas Harris didn't even want to write it to begin with). Some fans also disavow Hannibal for similar reasons.
- Fans generally only treat the first two Hellraiser films as canon. Series creator Clive Barker apparently agrees. The Boom Studios comic series he co-wrote was basically a sequel to those films, but ignored continuity from the rest of the series.
- Justified in that most Hellraiser sequels started out as completely unrelated horror movies until the studio realized they could just add a scene with Pinhead and put "Hellraiser" in the title to boost ticket sales.
- Some in the Highlander fandom disregards all sequels. It helps that each installment, besides quality problems, ignores events outside the first movie. (The only exceptions are Highlander: Endgame, which combines the first movie's and the TV series' continuity, and the Direct to Video Highlander: The Source which follows the events of Endgame). Highlander II: The Quickening gets this the hardest.
- On the topic of Endgame, fans generally disregard the movie for two main reasons: the various continuity errors note , and the fact that Duncan kills Connor.
- Other Highlander fans decide to ignore all the films for the sake of a protagonist who KNOWS how to handle a sword - that is, for Highlander the series.
- Some who have watched The Hobbit film trilogy like to ignore the love triangle between Kili, Tauriel and Legolas. The entire cast and crew of the said films seem to agree.
- Many people wish they had never heard of Home Alone 3, due to the absence of Macaulay Culkin, its mediocre quality, and the lack of genuinely funny villains, or the ones from Home Alone 4 onward simply because they suck. A few even wish they hadn't heard of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York because it's similar to the first one, just recycled in some other town.
- Understandably though, Macaulay Culkin would have been gotten too old to be able to keep up the part of Kevin by the time of Home Alone 3. (This was mocked on an episode of The Critic in which Jay Sherman reviews Home Alone 5, and the McAllisters are horrified to learn that they've - once again - left Kevin home alone because "he's only 23!")
- I Know What You Did Last Summer fans ignore the third movie for a number of reasons. Firstly there is the writing and acting but that's beside the point. The film doesn't continue the storyline of Julie and Ray, which was left in a cliff hanger in the second film, in favor for a new cast of characters and of course there's The Reveal that the killer in that film is the ghost of the killer in the first two movies.
- Some do not acknowledge Independence Day: Resurgence as a sequel to Independence Day.
- Many The X-Files fans will inform you that I Want to Believe never happened.
- Many James Bond fans would agree that Casino Royale (1967) (along with the Climax! TV Movie adaptation Casino Royale (1954)) and Never Say Never Again do not exist. Since neither one was made by Eon Productions, they're not in the main movie canon anyway.
- As for the Eon series, there are a few contested entries, like Die Another Day and Moonraker for example, that some fans feel are too campy or just flat-out ridiculous to take seriously as "real" 007 adventures. Many Brosnan-era fans prefer to think his turn ended with The World Is Not Enough even if Denise Richards playing a scientist was pushing it. Moonraker, for a good portion of the base, is (at best) a memorable and highly entertaining Guilty Pleasure with some incredible set pieces while its detractors often cite the over-the-top gondola chase, Jaws' Villain Decay and that it was more-or-less a clone of Roger Moore's previous outing The Spy Who Loved Me. Not helping is that TSWLM ended stating "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only." as Moonraker was an unintentional, blatant cash-in on the massive success of Star Wars.
- For the Daniel Craig-era, fans aren't really too crazy about Quantum of Solace with many preferring to go directly to Skyfall after Casino Royale (2006), both of which are considered Craig's 2 best films. And while many liked No Time to Die, others prefer to think Craig's story ended with Spectre, as at least that has a happy ending instead of downright killing 007.
- All the sequels to Jaws are disregarded by much of the fandom, in part because of the sharp drop in quality with each entry: the mediocre Jaws 2, the cheap but counterproductive "3D" gimmick in Jaws 3-D, and the ridiculous Voodoo Shark concept and horrific execution in Jaws: The Revenge. Additionally, some plot points in Jaws 3D are inconsistent with the remainder of the series.
- Quite common among the Jurassic Park film fans to say "what sequels?" All sequels are frequently regarded being inferior to the original. However, Michael Crichton wrote a second Jurassic Park novel on which the second film was loosely based, so the second film can at least claim some canonicity from that. The movies from the third onward have no such support. There's a particular rift of those who prefer to isolate the "original trilogy" from Jurassic World and its follow-ups.
- Most Kickboxer fans ignore everything after the first movie.
- Live Free or Die Hard splits opinions among Die Hard fans, but even those who have issues with that movie prefer to think that was the last in the series.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: The movies are rather well-received... except for The Incredible Hulk. The least-known film, one of the first (only preceded by Iron Man), and the one that fans most often 'forget'. Some justify this due to The Other Darrin setting in for Bruce once The Avengers rolled around. It's not as extreme of a case as so many others on this list, as some fans still include references or base fics off of it, but many prefer to forget that it's part of the series. If not for the fact that Tony Stark appears in the final scene of the movie (which is itself related to the one shot The Consultant), and that Thunderbolt Ross became a semi-regular starting with Captain America: Civil War, most fans would assume that Marvel themselves considered it non-canon, or at least Broad Strokes Canon. (Although seeing the Abomination in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings didn't help matters... or What If...? not discarding the movie from the MCU's past, even if there Mark Ruffalo had always played the Hulk.)
- Fans of The Mask almost unanimously loathe its sequel, mostly because of its overwhelmingly horrible quality and lack of Jim Carrey. They feel insulted having a long-awaited follow up to a beloved 90s quirky superhero crime thriller comedy be a mind-numbingly atrocious Lighter and Softer kids film chock full of Nightmare and Nausea Fuel and thus only see the first film worthy of canon.
- The same could be said for the animated series as well, although, unlike Son of the Mask, the animated series has fans who will defend the show from detractors.
- Some fans prefer to pretend that the second and third films in The Matrix franchise never happened. Particularly the third installment, as it contained fewer action scenes, gives us an overabundance of philosophical concepts and then suddenly dropped them. Word is still out on whether the fourth movie counts, specially by those who liked the sequels but disapproved the Trilogy Creep.
- As far as many fans of the Mission: Impossible TV series are concerned, whatever those movies were, they certainly did not depict the real IM Force, and that definitely wasn't Jim Phelps. Besides, the films completely ignored the elaborate scams aimed at fooling the bad guys which were the entire raison d'etre for the original series.
- This is especially the case for Mission: Impossible II, which was basically a generic action flick.
- Many people who saw The Mouse That Roared want to ignore the existence of The Mouse on the Moon.
- The Mummy Trilogy is an interesting case in that the first two films (The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns) are well-liked, but part of the fandom rejects the third (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) due to a number of reasons including The Other Darrin.
- The Muppets:
- Many Muppet fans like to pretend Muppets from Space never happened, not from quality reasons, but for resolving what Gonzo is.
- Many pretend that every Muppet movie after that (at least until The Muppets (2011)) never happened for quality reasons.
- Some regret that the series ended with The Muppet Christmas Carol, for the same reason.
- The 2011 film flat-out says everything after 1984 never happened, although there are references. Its sequel downright notes in a scene that it is supposed to be the eighth Muppet movie, but they don't care at how.
- Invoked in The Nostalgia Critic review of The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter in which he says it's a good thing there was never another sequel, even though there actually was, before turning on the theme from the movies to drown out the complaints to that effect. He ended up reviewing the third anyway. The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia is so awful that fans of the original like to pretend that it doesn't exist, helping that it's a wholly original creation (the second movie tried to adapt the second half of the book, thus there was no source material left). It's often placed on Worst Movies of All Time lists.
- Ignoring The Next Karate Kid is easy. Some fans also brushed aside the reviled The Karate Kid Part III too, until Cobra Kai came out and heavily relied on its events as basis for the third (Kreese and Terry Silver's backstory) and fourth season (which brings back Terry Silver).
- More than a few fans (including Wes Craven himself) prefer to think of the first A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as ending with the original, more upbeat finale where Freddy is defeated for good and everyone lives
- Quite a few fans completely ignore that A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge ever existed. Seeing as it doesn't fit in very well with the rest of the series.
- Some go so far as to only acknowledge the movies with Nancy Thompson in them: the first film, the third film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Especially as these are the only ones made with Wes Craven's involvement.
- Most people throw out the very end of Dario Argento's Opera, especially because it's a Diabolus ex Machina.
- Most people who have seen In the Heat of the Night are unaware of its two sequels, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs and The Organization.
- Pacific Rim fans often refuse to acknowledge the sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising for a number of reasons. The tone is vastly different (as original writer and director Guillermo del Toro was busy with the The Shape of Water,) and detractors deem it resembling something that Michael Bay made rather than anything in line with the first movie. The two protagonists of the first get shortchanged, with Raleigh not even appearing (even worse, he randomly died off-screen from cancer in a tie-in novel), while Mako Mori, often praised as a feminist role model, gets Demoted to Extra while being killed halfway through to serve as emotional development for the new male lead. A third returning character who is also incredibly popular, Newt, suffers a sudden Face–Heel Turn that wasn't foreshadowed in any way in the first film and even caused the actor to express Creator Backlash.
- With The Pink Panther films, there are fans who only count the films Peter Sellers was in as canon. Trail of the Pink Panther is an interesting case here, since it was assembled from deleted scenes and flashbacks of Sellers two years after his death. If the film doesn't count on its own, then the deleted scenes can be seen as canon in their original context of material dropped from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Even MGM/UA has encouraged the Sellers-only approach on occasion; the Pink Panther Film Collection DVD box set from 2004 only included the Sellers films they owned the rights to at the time (After they got back the rights to Return, it was included in Shout! Factory's Blu-ray set).
- The Pirates of the Caribbean film series tends to get its share of fans that believe either only the first film (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) or the first three films (which includes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) as canon. The critically-panned fourth movie often gets passed over as not being a real entry into the series, just on account of lacking the quality of the prior ones, or for being based off a pre-existing novel. And frankly, even people who did enjoy the movie (some think it was an improvement over the previous two sequels) admit that the movie is more of a spin-off than a true sequel, even if it is marketed as the latter. The fifth movie is even worse in that regard, although some give it a pass for bringing Will and Elizabeth back.
- Some Planet of the Apes fans choose to ignore the final original film, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, due to the bad quality of the plot and the writers' insistence on reinforcing the circular timeline theory that not all fans agree with.
- Due to change in the backstory introduced in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and referenced in the next two movies, those three films can be seen as an alternate timeline, although there are attempts to reconcile them all and even include the television series, Planet of the Apes.
- The ending of Pretty in Pink outraged many, and it is generally ignored in favor of the original ending, which was thrown out because Molly Ringwald, the star of the movie, suggested the new ending. John Hughes was notably displeased with the revised ending.
- Some Rambo fans pretend that the franchise ended with Rambo IV, since Rambo: Last Blood ended with Rambo losing his adoptive daughter and later his home to Human Traffickers, and finds himself once again Walking the Earth after killing them in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- The fandom of Red Eye tends to completely ignore Word of God saying that Jackson Rippner isn't even the character's real name, but one he made up. Partially because then no one would be able to agree on what to call him in fan-fiction, and partially because that throws his entire Villains Never Lie status, which is one of his few (canonical) good qualities, into question. A minor example, since it isn't technically part of the movie, revealed in a commentary, and thus could be considered non-canon.
- Resident Evil Film Series were never exactly critical darlings among fans and critics. However, most can agree that Resident Evil (2002)is the only one that's actually watchable while the rest (with the possible exception of Resident Evil: Apocalypse) are way too schlocky and/or non-sensical to almost Sharknado levels. But even the fans of sequels usually agree that Resident Evil: The Final Chapter never happened for many of reasons, including turning the epic and promising ending of Resident Evil: Retribution into a complete Curb-Stomp Battle with human population being reduced to less than 5000 people worldwide, the nonsensic reveal of Umbrella having planned the whole global outbreak all along, some characters that lived up to this point (Jill, Leon, Ada, Chris and Becky) disappearing without a trace, Wesker being Demoted to Dragon and then suffering an extremely unfitting and ridiculous death and, most of all, an extremely bleak Esoteric Happy Ending to boot.
- Many fans declared that Rocky V never happened, even before Rocky Balboa (mostly) ratified that judgment. Bill Simmons' use of the phrase "never happened" might be the Trope Codifier, or, at the very least, one of the more popular uses.
- Though technically a sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, being that it takes place after the prior film and even subtly references it a number of times, most fans would rather consider Shock Treatment to be a separate entity entirely. Even creator Richard O'Brien has claimed that the Brad and Janet of that film are not the same characters previously seen in RHPS - which is more or less universally accepted, due to their vastly different physical appearances (Jessica Harper bears absolutely no resemblance to Susan Sarandon) and failure to recognize characters that look *exactly* like the castle inhabitants.
- A number of Spy Kids fans agree that the less said about the third film, with its poor writing (including an ending which made no sense whatsoever by failing to explain how the virtual reality creations ended up in the real world) and a stupid "3D" gimmick, the better! It doesn't help that it was a Dolled-Up Installment made from a totally unrelated script.
- Some would also say there wasn't a second film either.
- And the fourth is possibly the least well-received of the bunch.
- Some would also say there wasn't a second film either.
- Some tend to pretend that Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation never happened because it is an Alien rip-off and has none of the original characters, yet they are okay with Starship Troopers 3: Marauder happening just because Rico from the first Starship Troopers movie is in it and it has the Marauder Power Armor in it from the books.
- Star Trek films:
- Many fans avoid any mention of the events in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier which almost became the Franchise Killer of the movie franchise. The Word of God from Gene Roddenberry himself was that many elements were "apocryphal". It didn't help that even from a technical standpoint, there were numerous issues with scale alone, from the improbable turbolift shaft scene, to the fact that both the Enterprise-A and a Klingon Bird-of-Prey make a journey that would take the faster Enterprise-D or Voyager thirty years without a wormhole, transwarp conduit, or some other Applied Phlebotinum.
- Numerous fans also throw out Nemesis, due to (among other things) the appearance of a sister race of the Romulans that had never been featured or mentioned before, the crew acting like they had never met another Soong-type android before, and Data dying even though it could have been easily avoided using other pieces of Applied Phlebotinum. On a lesser scale, fanfic writers Retcon the ending to allow Data to survive through various means (from swapping his mind with B4 to being blown into an Alternate Universe). In fact, the comic book series "Countdown", a lead-in to Star Trek (2009) suggests EXACTLY that Data's neural patterns were downloaded into B4 (the film itself makes the same suggestion, although perhaps not to the same degree).
- Star Trek: Insurrection is sometimes ignored simply for generally being considered bad, although this is easier as no canon-changing events occurred.
- A good number of fans throw out Star Trek: Generations, because they don't think Kirk should have been killed off so ingloriously.
- Many fans ignore J. J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot films for taking the "science" of Star Trek from 'vaguely plausible' to 'no idea how physics works in any way' and for a supposed overall "dumbing down" of the franchise.
- Many fans who disliked Khan's Race Lift and colder characterization in Star Trek Into Darkness have come up with elaborate theories on how "John Harrison" was an impersonator and the real Khan is still floating around as a popsicle somewhere. It helps that the movie only uses "Khan Noonien Singh" to refer to the Prime universe's Khan, and in the real world, "Khan" originated as a Mongolian title meaning "chief" or "king," with its use as a name being secondary, making it entirely possible for the word to refer to different people.
- Like with the Star Wars prequels, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had really high expectations, and those disappointed have since tried to ignore its existence.
- There is also the fact that unlike Star Wars, Indy's EU is fairly obscure, so it's no surprise many fans not only don't think of any but the movies as canon... they don't even know about the novels, comics (specially the terrible 80s Marvel comics), park rides, tabletop games and videogames. Opinion is perhaps more divided about the prequel TV series, the only non-movie installment that gets some references in fan fiction.
- A small but committed group of Dr. Jones's students believes that any reports of Dr. Jones' work in China and India circa 1935 are entirely fictional. And another group of equally committed students believes that it was his most important expedition to date.
- Many fans of the franchise tend to accept only the first two Superman films as worthy of canon, furiously denying the validity of further sequels. In fact, Superman Returns attempted to play into the fans little game by also ignoring films beyond Superman II but it also fell prey to the ostracism.
- Once the Terminator was out of the James Cameron's hands, came movies that not all fans are willing to acknowledge. Even Cameron's return writing and producing Terminator: Dark Fate ended up a target of derision and erasure, especially for unceremoniously killing John Connor in the opening scene, a Happy Ending Override comparable to the above mentioned Alien 3 that disapproving fans pointed out as making the first two movies All for Nothing.
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a really weird case since the continuity is very inconsistent.
- A number of fans say that only the first film is canon, ignoring the second film for being too comedic, the third film for not being a continuation, the fourth film for being a cheap knock-off of the first film, and Texas Chainsaw 3D for not making much sense.
- Some fans believe that only the first two films are canon, claiming that the second film is the true sequel since it features the same Sawyer family members from the first movie. Some even accept that Leatherface dies at the end of the second movie.
- Other fans believe that the third film is the only canon sequel since it has no direct mention of the events of the second film, despite the fact that an actress from the second film has a cameo. Also, Leatherface is somehow alive even after the explosion at the end of the second film.
- A lot of people hate the fourth film so much that they are willing to accept that the previous sequels are both true sequels and that the fourth film is non-canon.
- Controversially, some, including Kim Henkel himself, believe that the fourth film is the only true sequel since it has a similar tone.
- Others, including the writers themselves, choose to believe that Texas Chainsaw is the only true sequel since it does not mention the previous sequels and also because it opens with a scene that takes place right after the first movie that contradicts the second movie.
- Many fans of The Three Stooges will tell you that the boys called it quits after Shemp's death in 1955. A substantial number will go further, insisting that the Stooges broke up after Curly's stroke in 1946. And don't even mention Joe Besser to a die-hard fan of the Stooges.
- An unusual inversion of the trope with TRON — Disney declared the game TRON 2.0 and its related materials (Killer App, Ghost in the Machine) as non-canonical when TRON: Legacy was green-lit, much like their declaration they were throwing out the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe when green-lighting The Force Awakens. But the fanbase tends to ignore the Disney mandate as much as possible, and find ways to patch the two sequels.
- X-Men Film Series:
- Some fans chose to ignore Jean's and Scott's deaths or Rogue taking the Cure in the third movie. Other fans tend to disregard the movie as a whole. The writers of X-Men: Days of Future Past seem to agree, considering that the movie was one long Author's Saving Throw to remove X-Men: The Last Stand from the movie continuity.
- And then there are some that prefer to ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine, because it was poorly executed and has a lot of continuity errors with the main series. The movies that followed even ignored it pretty much entirely, and X-Men: First Class directly contradicted it (although The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past each briefly includes a scene of Origins in a flashback).
- While Logan is well-liked, many fans prefer to think of it as a separate universe, as its ultimate fate for the X-Men and mutantkind in general turns the entire franchise into a massive Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. In addition:
- Some feel that dropping bridges on most of the cast did them a disservice by denying them proper closure for their arcs and ultimately makes the film series about Wolverine even more than it already was.
- Others, however, feel that the Broad Strokes approach actually works in favor of the movie and works in a similar vein to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? as a mythic take on superhero films.
- Once Dark Phoenix turned out to be quite the underwhelming movie, many decided to discard it to make Logan the Grand Finale. Alternatively, for those who invoke this trope for even that movie for the all reasons listed above, X-Men: Days of Future Past is the true ending to the franchise.
- The Deadpool movies have a loose approach at best to continuity anyway, so many fans don't even try to fit them in with the rest.
- The vast majority of Step Up fans prefer not to acknowledge the sixth movie Year of the Dance, as it's essentially divorced from the first five in its setting and cast.
